Bayonetta Director Discusses Bayonetta’s Sexiness

Before Hideki Kamiya acted as the director of Bayonetta, he created iconic video game characters such as Leon Kennedy and Dante. Besides being owned by Capcom, these characters have one other thing in common. They’re both male.

During an E3 demonstration Kamiya spoke about Bayonetta’s design. Right from the start he decided he wanted to create a female character. When Bayonetta double jumps pastel butterfly wings appear and she uses a lipstick mark as a lock on target. These touches accentuate Bayonetta’s femininity and sexuality, elements that Kamiya didn’t get to play with when designing male characters.

“A lot of games have female characters with big boobs and show a lot of cleavage. That’s not my personal preference or my personal taste. That’s not very sexy at all,” said Kamiya. “Normal size is more than adequate. Being sexual in a mysterious sort of way is more sexy than baring it all.”

God I’ve hated the trailers for this thing. They sum up neatly just about every way that chasing action movie asthetics has harmed game development.

http://kureyuki.livejournal.com/ Kay

“Normal size is more than adequate. Being sexual in a mysterious sort of way is more sexy than baring it all.”

Um, last time I checked, Bayonetta is pretty much naked during her special attacks. (I think someone forgot about those instants…)

Also, Amaterasu’s…male?

Lucky

Amaterasu is a female, and if she’s actually a male then they screwed up on the gender of a already existing deity (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, SHIVA!).

http://www.siliconera.com Spencer

Mythology wise Amaterasu is female, but I thought as a wolf in Capcom’s game she became a he. Anyway, Kamiya wouldn’t be able to do the same things with Amaterasu as Bayonetta since s/he is an animal.

Edit: Gender ambiguity aside, Bayonetta is the first human female designed by Kamiya. The article has been updated to end debates and discuss the creation of Bayonetta.

CocytusCustom

You play as Amaterasu (female) descending to Earth to possess a statue (genderless) of a legendary (male) wolf. So yeah.

Ereek

I’m excited about this game, but I’m not very interested in the overly sexualized nature of Bayonetta herself. It’s interesting about the lipstick though, I don’t think I noticed that.

UFO

Bayonetta actually grosses me out.

hahthgf

That’s not my personal preference or my personal taste.

YEA RIGHT you japan perv ;)

Aoshi00

Who are we kidding, sex sells. If Bayonetta doesn’t look like she does now, it wouldn’t have generated so much buzz in the first place, it is how this title is differentiated from so many other action games. And we have Team Ninja dolling up Samus in Metroid Other M too, who doesn’t want to see a pretty face under that helmet.

But I don’t get what the director is saying, he’s kind of contradicting himself..

http://www.siliconera.com Spencer

I sort of thought so too, but after listening to the session while transcribing this I think I see his point… maybe.

Perhaps, Kamiya is comparing Bayonetta to the girls from DOA or say Ivy from Soulcalibur. Bayonetta sort of looks modest in comparison.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

It does seem like he’s contradicting himself. I agree that normal proportions are far sexier than the gigantic boobies from DOA or Soul Calibur, but when he starts to talk about showing cleavage, you wonder if he forgot all the times he proudly showed off how Bayonetta’s clothes are made of hair.

I also remember that infamous crotch shot from the very first trailer, which was just…ugh. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kamiya and I think his ability to create characters with personalities that you love is second to none. But I think he gave in to the temptation of using Bayonetta’s sex appeal to advertise her instead of her personality, which he still insists is what makes her special.

This is something that always bothers me. If you’re as cool and collected as he implies Bayonetta is supposed to be, your body language wouldn’t be – for lack of a better word – all…slutty…the way hers is. The glasses give her a very librarian-esque vibe, and she’d make an awesome “sexy geek” character, which sounds like what Kamiya intended for in the first place.

Instead, she comes across as the seductive headmistress that likes having sex with her students.

I wish they’d been able to portray her in a way Kamiya’s claims could be backed up. There’s a difference between being aware of your sex appeal and not worrying about how you look on the job (a la Revy from Black Lagoon perhaps?) and flaunting your curves every chance you get for no good reason at all. I think Kamiya got it right with Ada. Bayonetta…not yet anyway.

(Wow, I edited this post so many times.)

Kickass King

Yeah, Amaterasu is called, in Game mind you, “The great Amaterasu, mother to us all”

ttdl

Ammy’s a girl, you know. I don’t think we’ve heard ‘mother of us all’ about two dozen times for nothing….and Yatsu (the priest at the Satomi shrine) said she’s a lovely maiden out of dog form as well, IIRC.

You can argue that Ammy’s sexuality doesn’t matter much, I suppose, and she appreciates good-looking women as much as Issun does, but her mannerisms does seem female and that other part could’ve been an Issun thing.

jewad

Wrong, Ametratsu was a female, but you couldn’t really have cleavage on a wolf

Scuba

So, Kamiya created the character, Bayonetta, not Kazuma Kaneko?

If so, why the hell did I read somewhere (forgot) that Kaneko designed her? False information is _____.

QBasic

Where on effing hell did you hear/read that it was Kaneko who designed her?

Scuba

Now that I searched for it, I read it on THIS SITE, in this section on one of the Bayonetta features. How funny.